- cross-posted to:
- gaming@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- gaming@beehaw.org
You may want to know that Ubisoft’s Rocksmith® 2014 Edition will be de-listed from Steam after October 23rd, 2023 which is one week from this post date. This is a game that makes learning to play the guitar like Guitar Hero/Rockband, which can score you or let you slowly practice a part with scrolling fret indicators.
Now, it’s not on sale or anything (hasn’t been for a couple years), there might be W11 issues (I’m using Win 10 and Linux computers), and you’ll need a real guitar and either a mic or special USB cable to properly play the game. However, after this date you won’t be able to purchase this game anymore unless you buy from a key-seller or a retail CD copy.
Of course, Ubisoft is going to replace this 40 CAD game with a subscription service model called Rocksmith+ which is 20 CAD per month and not available on Steam. On the other hand, RS2014 works without the need of a Uplay account and can be played offline (Just press Esc twice at the signin screen).
Now there are 1555 DLCs available but they will eventually be delisted as well at some point in the future but you won’t be able to get them without the base game. The only DLC you will “need” is the Cherub Rock DLC because of…
Custom DLC is a community created mod lets you play user-created and converted maps. By default it uses the DLC ID of Cherub Rock which is why you need it, but this is configurable if you really don’t want to spend 4 CAD. There are tens of thousands of Custom DLC songs available online so you will be hard pressed to run out of new ones to try.
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Of course, Ubisoft is going to replace this 40 CAD game with a subscription service model called Rocksmith+ which is 20 CAD per month and not available on Steam. On the other hand, RS2014 works without the need of a Uplay account and can be played offline (Just press Esc twice at the signin screen).
More likely the music license expires and they can’t distribute the game without one.
You’re probably correct, they’ve already delisted some DLC songs due to license expiry…
But if they are or will be relicensing many of the songs for their subscription service Rocksmith+, why couldn’t they use those same licenses to keep distributing Rocksmith 2014 and its DLC in stores? Unfortunately I’m not too thorough with music licensing.
My guess is the record companies refused to renew the perpetual license for a cost that Ubi could justify in order to keep the one time purchase model. Everyone wants subscription model from the top to the bottom.
which is still bullshit
So why not renew the license?
Even if true, it’s a convenient excuse to convert to a rolling subscription service. Enshittificarion continues.
Renewing the license probably costs more money than what a nearly 10 year old game is likely to make.
You would think licenses for a game hardly anyone buys anymore would be incredibly cheap to renew. OTOH I know the music industry is run by greedy fucks who make Ubisoft look like a charity, so I don’t expect reasonable license terms to be offered.
But Rock Band 4 still lets you buy and play songs from the first three Rock Band games and those were from the X360 era.
Interestingly enough, Harmonix still releases new music for the game that was released the sams year as the first Xbox One.
Nah its more that they don’t want to further canibalize there own customers. New customers will/are steered towards the subscription game. However old players may or may not have all content so if they want new dlc for their current game they are out of luck and will be funneled twords you guessed it the subscription model.
I bet they will probably launch a massive mail campaign for old and new players and update the game as well so they can insert a pop up with a message like "want more and better experience " or “want to continue the journey…” I fear they will alter the game a bit nothing major just slightly to steer you
It’s shitty but it’s not enshittification.
This is what happens with every single music license game in existence.
It sucks but there’s nothing they can do because the shrinking user base does not justify renewing the licenses, both in terms of fee and effort.
At least you get to keep the DLC titles you purchased, which probably wouldn’t happen with a SaaS title
At least you get to keep the DLC titles you purchased, which probably wouldn’t happen with a SaaS title
Precisely. This is why I’m giving people a heads up that this is the last opportunity for this game with the “buy it, keep it forever and do whatever with it” model.
Since I’m not aware of CustomDLC for Rocksmith+ or if there will ever be, you’d be entirely at the mercy of what songs Ubisoft has the license for you to play, even if their catalogue is sizable.
You do know how exploitative the record labels can be, right? Those license fees will not be small. This is part of the reason games like Guitar Hero stopped being made.
It’s like they’re more interested in being dicks than they are in making money.
Oh no, they’re interested in making money. The problem is the record labels have formed an oligopoly on a massive part of our culture, so there’s nowhere else to go.
I guess you are going to front those fees for them right?
Because this game costs $40 and they want to release a direct competitor to their own product for $20 month.
It’s a learning tool: practically every user will need more than 2 months of play time.
It’s a good thing I have a copy of this already. Yar har.
Because it’s a 10 year old game with few players and even fewer that are going to buy it new….
Music licenses are expensive as a hell and it doesn’t make sense to pay for a license when you’re only gonna have a few hundred/thousand people using it.
This is a prime use case for quality open source software.
Even with open source software, there would still need to be license to use the music and that is expiring
This is a prime case for the abolition of intellectual property rights.
3rd party rhythm games are usually dont ask dont tell about how they source their songs.
Osu is a taiko no tatsujin, Beatmania, Elite Beat Agents, O2Jam, DDR, DJMax clone. Clone Hero is a rock band/Guitar hero clone, and the list goes on.
They will generally pack a few songs that were given to them for use, but the rest is on the users
Oh yeah, I’ve played one or two of those. How many of them are open source?
osus source code i think is public, clone heros not that im aware of. different games will have varying levels of openess. all will share that adding official songs into the game is the least of their efforts, as thats more on the community to build.
I mean, could one source the music from a streaming service or YouTube (provided that the user has a subscription)?
no, because they don’t provide the stems, only the finished tracks
This is a prime use case for some quality open source software. Analyze audio, separate tracks, generate playing instructions for tracks.
what software can reliably generate stems from finished tracks? and will it still sound the same when you mix them back together?
I don’t know if any exists. But it’s theoretically possible and I think going from separated track to stems might be one of the easier parts (thanks Fourier!), though complicated by most notes appearing on each string in different places, but I bet there’s an algorithm (again possible, not necessarily currently existing) for determining one of the easiest combinations to play rather than having to jump all over the fretboard.
As for sounding the same, you’d need to recreate the guitar effects used, and then it can be mixed back with the other tracks. Easier said than done, but I suspect this part does exist, though maybe not as open source.
Apologies if that wording should only be used for things one can download and use right now rather than a cool project idea I hope gets created. I might even give it a go, but I’m least confident about the track seperation part.
the software being open source would do nothing to solve the underlying issue, which is expiring music rights
Theres a torrent by Fitgirl that has all the Dlcs btw
This is the only comment I need lol
Does it also include the game itself? I wouldn’t mind not paying ubisoft
Yep, the whole 9 yards, it cost like 2 grand for all the dlcs on a good day
The Rocksmith+ song selection is garbage. Don’t bother.
The one thing a subscription kinda makes sense for, as opposed to paying for every song a la carte, and they don’t even have all the songs of the previous games. What a fucking embarrassment.
I imagine the licensing just doesn’t carry forward and it has to be re-negotiated, but if that’s the case then they’re hilariously slow at it. I check every six months or so and there’s still only a handful of bands I recognize.
Dude rocksmith+ has zero songs from either jimi Hendrix or Chuck berry. Moving closer in time, no green day or sublime. Even closer, no Paramore or fall out boy. I don’t know who rocksmith+ is supposed to be for but… It’s not people that want to play guitar.
Yeah it’s really weird. They have like, a ton of songs from a couple of bands I know, Alice Cooper and Bowling for Soup, one whole song from Amon Amarth, two from Ozzy Osborne, and then a ton of obscure artists.
It seems like they went for the cheapest songs to license just to pad the numbers with the least amount of capital investment. But then threw in a few big names just to make it seem like they might have more music you’d know.
The ozzy ones aren’t even ozzy songs. They’re from an album of covers that ozzy did. Total clown show.
Not to mention, a majority of “songs” in their database are only chord charts which are barely useful for someone that actually wants to play a song on their instrument.
Surprise surprise, a “live service” game is a lazy soulless cash grab.
Check out customsforge.com for custom dlc.
sigh Time to add Rocksmith to my growing collection of physical copies of abandonware.
Thanks for the heads up! What cable do you use under linux?
Shouldn’t the same RealTone cable work?
You can use the same cables. The Rocksmith cable is simply a standard guitar to USB, it isn’t doing anything Linux doesn’t know how to handle.
Any microphone or better yet audio interface with an “instrument in” jack will work with the game. I’d personally rather not rely on a single use type computerized cable from a game company that doesn’t support the game anymore.
The RealTone cable works outside of the game too, I’ve used it to record bass in a DAW.
Any idea if the scarlett usb audio interface works with rocksmith on linux? was looking in to rocksmith at some point but never bought it
Yes. There is a mod that allows audiointerfaces to be connected directly to RS via asio drivers.
https://github.com/mdias/rs_asio
Tho it is stated that you also need wineasio for linux.
You need some fiddeling to get it working even under windows but once it works its almost perfect.
Generally it will work. If it’s recognized as an audio input or microphone then it will work just fine under Microphone mode, if you want to use it like a RealTone Cable or whatever it was called, you will have to rename that audio input interface and make sure the bitrate and number of channels matches that cable.
My Scarlett 2i2 works perfectly with RS_ASIO.
thanks friend. gonna buy it before it leaves!
You had success with the song manager plugin?No, I’ve never tried that plugin, or any modding really. I just play vanilla Rocksmith 2014 with the ASIO plugin.
Focusrite interfaces have been known to have issues with RS ASIO in general. I never got it to work properly with my Solo 3rd gen but I also haven’t tried recently. YMMV.
If I buy it now, will it be DOA if the music expires?
Ubisoft has announced that people who have the game and official DLCs, will continue to be able to use them after delisting.
And as far as I can tell, the game still works despite not connecting to Ubisoft servers, so Ubisoft would have to release an update to the game purposely to break its offline function (now I wouldn’t put it past Ubi to do it but unlikely).
Historically, and I believe per the announcement, any content you’d already bought you will be able to download even after it’s been delisted.
Aw bocce balls I guess i’ll go back to learning guitar from someone else or Yousician.
If you have purchased RS2014 you will still be able to use it, and with the DLC installed you will still be able to play custom maps though I presume the amount of submissions will continue to dwindle.
I bought on Steam, am I gone lose access to it?
No - it should remain in your library.
Thanks!
Glad I bought a physical copy a while back cuz I needed the cable to plug my guitar in.
